


Graveside

by whoaswetha



Category: Cabin Pressure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-05
Updated: 2014-01-05
Packaged: 2018-01-07 13:41:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1120517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whoaswetha/pseuds/whoaswetha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Martin has finally made it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Graveside

**Author's Note:**

> A little piece for my friend Eve! Hope you guys enjoy :)  
> Un-Beta'd/Brit-picked/whatever. I wrote it and checked it myself so all mistakes are mine.

_The greasy smells of overbuttered popcorn and deepfried food loitered around the entrance of the air museum. Young Martin Crieff’s eyes lit up not with the promise of sweets but with the promise of the aviation-related treasures inside._

_He turned to his father and gave him a huge smile. “Thanks Dad! This is the best gift ever!” His thin gangly arms wrapped around Gregory Crieff’s  middle. Mr. Crieff smiled to himself and ruffled his youngest son’s hair._

_“Come on Martin, let’s go inside.” Martin was only too eager to comply with his father’s wish. Earlier that week, for Martin’s birthday, Mr. Crieff came home bearing tickets to Martin’s favorite air museum and a promise to take Martin that very weekend._

_The inside of the air museum had so many aeroplanes that Martin thought his head might explode with excitement. He gasped at the marvels of the planes, the old ones and the new ones, taking his time and care to read the silvered placques beside each plane, sounding out each new word carefully and storing it away for later examination._

_However that day was also the day that Gregory Crieff realized that Martin’s “childish” love for aeroplanes was far more serious than he predicted. As he watched Martin lose himself in the framework of machines that once had the possibility to take him up so high he grew worried that his youngest son was going to lose himself in the stuff of dreams. Better to squash the bug early on. So, at the end of the day he gathered his son and held him in one place_

_“Martin, you do know...you do know this aeroplane stuff…it’s okay as a hobby, right? It’s not….It’s not okay as a grown up thing, okay?”_

_Martin would never heed his words._

**16 years, 7 months, 3 weeks, and 2 days late** r

Wokingham’s cemetery, no matter which time of day, was dreary and dull. Martin wasn’t surprised. All cemeteries were dreary and he had not particularly wanted to be here. It was the first time Martin had come to the cemetery after his father’s funeral. Unlike the rest of his family, Martin did not live near Wokingham nor did he have the express desire to visit his father’s grave as often as he knew his mother and sister did. So when he finally reached his father’s grave, he was surprised to see an actual gravestone instead of those little plastic markers they often use. Has it really been that long? Martin burrows his hands further into his pockets. It seems as if it was only yesterday that the dreadful phone call woke him up from his fitful sleep at nearly three in the morning. It seems as if it was only yesterday that he departed Parkside Terrace at five in the morning to catch the earliest bus to Wokingham for his father’s funeral. His mouth goes dry at the memory of it. Martin’s relationship with his father is strenuous at best. It’s going to take a lot more than a little tiny death for him to forget all those times his father (of all people) told Martin that he would never become a pilot. Of course, that didn’t stop him, but it would have been nice to have someone at least believe in him and pick him up when he fell. It would have been really bloody nice if he had that sort of comfort with his family the way his flatmates had with their family. That’s what family was for, right? Then why did Martin get stuck with such a terrible family?

A cold, bleary, April morning found Martin Crieff standing in front of his father’s gravestone. The previous night, Martin received the news that he never thought he would hear. All of his troubles, his strife, was worth it because he could finally say, proudly and happily, that he was a certified pilot. His phone call home was met with false enthusiasm and Martin knew it was a lost cause. So why he even bothered to come to the graveyard in the first place was baffling. It’s not as if his father could stop being dead and tell him that he was proud of his son for achieving his dream (which he most certainly won’t be) and even then, that wouldn’t make everything better.

Martin shivered underneath his thin jacket as he f took in the gravestone Simon picked out for his father. Six feet underneath his own feet, his father’s dead body lay within a wooden and metal coffin. He sniffled and tried desperately not to think about that. His eyes fell on the gravestone

  
GREGORY CRIEFF

5.21.1959-12.14.2005

A Loving Father & Husband

His hands curled into fists the moment he read the inscription. Oh God….what am I even doing here? It was a complete waste of time and yet...and yet here he was.

“Dad, hey. You...you probably can’t hear me..fancy that if you could, eh?”

_God I am talking to a bloody gravestone, as if things weren’t shit anyways._

“I don’t….I don’t know what I’m doing here Dad. I really don’t but since I am here I might as well say it. It’s not like you’re here to fucking hear me anyways so it doesn’t matter.” Martin broke off before his voice could. He swiped at his eyes because he didn’t come here to cry like a big baby he came...oh  even he didn’t know.   

Martin coughed and continued, his voice shaky. 

“I made it, okay? I fucking made it and I didn’t need your bloody help anyways. I’m a pilot now. So, thanks for nothing.” 

When Martin was younger, his mother always tried to coax him to say whatever happened to be on his mind. It was a trick that never worked because Martin simply didn’t like talking about his feelings or why he felt the way he did. He prefered to keep them all bottled up inside (so much good that does him) but now...now that he had said what he had...he could understand why his mother was so keen about getting him to speak his mind. He really, genuinely, could understand now because it felt as if a weight had been lifted from his chest. He breathed in and out deeply. Even though he had finally passed the damned CPL exam and even though he had a job interview with MJN Air the day after tomorrow, despite all of these things, despite the fact that he tried so hard to tell himself that his family’s acceptance didn’t matter and it shouldn’t bother him, it did. God damn it, but it did. But maybe the first step to acceptance wasn’t his family accepting him, it was him accepting himself for who he was, accepting that Martin Crieff and Aviation were a  package deal.

As Martin left Wokingham cemetery, his step was lighter and his load less of a burden. He wasn’t some freak obsessed with aeroplanes. Martin Crieff was a pilot, and never again would he be anything less

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! :)


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